How a Wichita State program could help solve Kansas’ teacher shortage

by Marcus Clem, Beacon: Wichita
August 22, 2024

Raising five children and working as a teacher’s aide in Newton left Emily Crawford with too little time to take college classes to become a teacher.

So she became an apprentice — earning a teacher’s salary ahead of schedule.

All those hours tied up in the classroom helped pave her path to a college degree, letting her zip through the training she needed to graduate from Wichita State University.

Crawford, now a mother of six, teaches third grade at Newton’s South Breeze Elementary. She never had to work as an unpaid student teacher.

“Not only did I not have to attend college that long, but it (was) also affordable for my family,” Crawford said.

WSU’s Teacher Apprenticeship Program lets students learn and earn money as teacher’s aides or paraprofessionals while they speed their way to filling the statewide public school faculty shortage. Kansas schools have more than 1,500 teaching jobs they can’t fill.

Wichita State’s program follows a national trend of grow-your-own strategies to outfit more people to become teachers.

Why is teacher training needed?

Teacher vacancies in Kansas rose 31% from 2020 to 2022. Of all 50 states, only Vermont posted a higher rate of teachers leaving the profession.

High stress, health concerns and extra long hours during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many teachers to leave the profession. Even after the pandemic eased, the trend continued.

Student behavior issues, caused by trauma at home or undeveloped social skills, increased after the pandemic. Teachers often cite worsening behavior and the stress it causes for nudging them to other work.

Fewer people want to train as teachers, compounding the shortage. From 2008 to 2018, enrollments in teacher-training programs dropped 45% nationwide.

Schools in high-poverty areas face a tougher challenge in hiring and keeping teachers on staff.

Jamie Lansang works at Wichita’s William Allen White Elementary, where most students get free or reduced-price lunches. She said the apprenticeship program gave her the time to learn at her own pace and confirmed her love for teaching.

“I could go around and see education in action,” Lansang said.

After four years as a paraprofessional, she taught third grade for two years while studying in Wichita State’s apprenticeship program. She finished in two years because she’d been to college before.

After graduating in 2023, she had planned to keep teaching but now works as a behavioral interventionist, helping kids develop skills to succeed in the classroom.

Lansang said her training as a teacher gives her insight into what her colleagues are dealing with.

“Nowadays, you truly have to have a passion to do it,” she said. “Now, you either sink or swim.”

How Wichita State teacher training happens

All 50 states have adopted some sort of grow-your-own program to recruit and train teachers locally. More than half focus on apprenticeships.

Wichita State’s program lets trainees work while in school and offers them a break on tuition. Kansas residents pay about $3,000 per year less in tuition and fees for the online program than other full-time WSU students. The university thinks that helps draw teaching students.

“That, I think, is the secret sauce” of the apprenticeship program, said Jennifer Friend, the dean of applied sciences at WSU, “and why I think this program is so successful.”

Students working as teacher’s aides don’t make much, but Crawford said Pell Grants covered most of her tuition.

Students working in school districts with a grade-point average above 2.75 can qualify for a limited teacher’s license after just two semesters, Friend said, or one if they only already have a bachelor’s degree.

Districts hire them as entry-level teachers, a significant bump in salary. An entry-level teacher earns about 50% more than a new paraprofessional at Wichita Public Schools.

“They become the teacher of record,” Friend said, “responsible for a classroom and getting their careers started sooner.”

Traditional systems don’t let students earn money working in the classroom. In fact, they have to pay tuition to get hands-on teaching experience as a student teacher.

Kansas expands Wichita State’s idea

The Kansas State Department of Education hopes to spread this success to colleges and school districts across the state.

The department consulted with Jill Wood, Wichita State’s teaching apprenticeship coordinator, to help craft the state’s Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program.

“We were the pilot program,” Wood said. “Now it has taken off.”

Under the Kansas program, the state helps students foot the bill, paying the school district $7,500 per student each year to pay for tuition, fees and books. The district also must pay each student at least $14 per hour, with raises as they gain experience.

“I firmly believe that if you provide the pathway and remove barriers,” Wood said, “that’s when you see that teacher shortage start to decrease.”

The state program also helps provide school districts with much-needed classroom help.

“I hope this will encourage more individuals to become paras, to become aides,” she said, “and then work toward their teaching degrees.”

The system means to appeal to people who started college and did not finish, or who did finish and want to change careers.

Credentials and heavy coursework

Despite the need to fill classroom vacancies, some experts recommend caution.

The National Education Association, America’s largest labor union, urged school districts in 2016 not to hire people into teaching positions unless they have finished training to become teachers.

“Relaxing requirements, after all, is easy, and gives the appearance that some sort of action is being taken,” the NEA warned. “However, hiring under-credentialed teachers represents a very slippery slope.”

Teachers hired without a bachelor’s degree and license, the union said, tend to quit more often and sooner.

But apprenticeships are different, the union said in later findings, because they provide a path to a teaching degree with guidance from current professionals.

NEA’s local affiliate, the United Teachers of Wichita, embraces teacher apprenticeships because they give new teachers the help they need on the job.

Teacher apprentices receive visits at least once per week from credentialed teachers who mentor them, help them understand their tasks, help them stay organized and soothe stress.

United Teachers president Katie Warren worked as an apprentice mentor for two years. She visited the apprentices at least once a week in class and offered advice.

“In Wichita, we make sure anyone in the teacher apprenticeship program has that extra support,” she said.

Warren said time management was a concern.

Most of her students found it difficult to juggle family, coursework and teaching responsibilities, like preparing lesson plans and grading.

“I had some phenomenal teachers with a lot of classes to take online,” Warren said, “and they also had children of their own, and so it was a heavy burden.”

School districts, she said, can’t expect to end the teacher shortage with new recruits alone — it’s essential to keep veterans on the job.

Signs point to overall success

Since the apprenticeship program started at Wichita State in 2017, 1,047 people have graduated.

The program placed fully qualified teachers into districts that need them, Wood said, but research to be done this year will reveal just how many — and what effect they’re having.

“We want to know the impact our students are making in classrooms,” Wood said, “where they’re reducing shortages.”

Jenna Shaban, Wichita Public Schools hiring manager, said grow-your-own programs have played a key role in recruiting over the past five years.

“Individuals in these programs,” she said in an email, “represent around 20% of our new teacher hires each year.”

Other states have achieved similar success. Brown University researchers found apprenticeship programs in 28 states increased the teacher supply by removing financial barriers.

President Joe Biden’s administration has embraced the concept, committing $100 million to develop and fund teacher apprenticeships.

“These models provide robust classroom experience for teachers during their training,” the White House said in a briefing.

This article first appeared on Beacon: Wichita and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.